Alpha Natural Resources announced a major overhaul of its coal mining operations Tuesday, including the immediate closure of eight mines in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania and planned layoffs of 1,200 employees.

The announcement — immediate bad news for about 400 workers in some key election battleground states — stoked an already burning political fire lit by what coal industry supporters call the Obama administration’s “war on coal.”

This week, the House will vote on a Stop the War on Coal bill meant to scale back Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are trouble for the industry, an effort that some Republicans hope will win votes in the key swing state of Ohio. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign called Alpha’s cutbacks a clear result of President Barack Obama’s policies.

“For four years, President Obama has waged a war on coal that has devastated the middle class and American workers. Today’s news that the president’s policies are killing another 1,200 jobs in states like Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania is just the latest evidence President Obama hasn’t delivered for middle-class families,” said Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams.

Alpha, the nation’s second-largest coal producer, will increase its focus on metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel and typically feeds the export markets, while downsizing its higher-cost production of thermal coal, which is used to generate electricity.

“Operations that have competitive cost positions and more stable customer demand — such as supplying baseload power plants and generating units that will survive a stricter regulatory regime — will supply the majority of the company’s U.S. thermal coal output,” the company said in a statement.

What won’t survive are thermal coal operations that have high transportation costs.

The plans are indicative of the larger struggle faced by the coal industry: rising costs of railroad transportation because of fuel and labor, tighter EPA regulations that fall heavy on the coal industry and a booming natural gas industry. The latter two factors have prompted a tidal shift in the electric generation industry to switch plants to natural gas.

And an exceptionally warm winter kicked the industry while it was down, leaving coal stockpiles unused as energy demand tumbled.

Alpha stock, which has plummeted more than 60 percent so far this year, slipped 2.6 percent on Tuesday to $7.87. The company, which posted $7.1 billion in total revenue in 2011, reported a loss of $2.2 billion in the second quarter of this year.

Alpha isn’t the first company to take a big hit.

On Friday, Patriot Coal Corp. announced temporary shutdowns of 85,000 tons of metallurgical coal production per month because of weak market demand, cutting 250 employee and contractor jobs. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July.

In May, Moody’s Investors Service announced a negative outlook for the U.S. coal industry, expecting a permanent decline in consumption.

Alpha plans to cut 16 million tons of coal production annually, 40 percent of which will come from thermal operations in the east, and 50 percent from the Powder River Basin in order to match its “committed sales volumes.”

Alpha will also focus on the export market, and it has already begun to implement a new international sales program to target overseas demand, the company said.

Layoffs start immediately in the eight mines in the east, where approximately 400 employees got the bad news Tuesday. By early 2013, the company said, about 1,200 of its 13,100 employees will lose their jobs.